


Rest and Prove and Rest Again

by Her_Madjesty



Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [2]
Category: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Great British Bake Off Fusion, Alternative Universe - Television Crew, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27880177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: Twelve new bakers. Thirty new challenges. With a predictably unpredictable British summer nipping at the bakers' heels, only time will tell how things will play out in the iconic tent.
Relationships: Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)
Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037376
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Rest and Prove and Rest Again

**Author's Note:**

> On the second day of Christmas, a harried writer gave to thee...a Great British Baking Show!AU!
> 
> My thanks to this merry little band of readers for your enthusiasm over my self-inflicted, ill-advised challenge. It is an honest pleasure to share my work with you, and I hope I do you proud. Brief trigger warning for Claudio and his standard, wedding-related violence; nothing gets discussed in detail, but there's a sentence or two that touches on that subject. 
> 
> Now, I've only gotten four hours of sleep, so I'm posting this bugger and going back to bed. I'll see you all on the 6th.

_Hero is a 24-year old_ _second year student_ _studying_ _agricultural affairs at the University of Bristol_ _. She_ _used to_ _spend her summers_ _in_ _her native Sicily,_ _where she worked_ _with her cousin_ _in the fields of her father’s vineyard._

_*_

It’s Beatrice’s fault that she ends up on the show in the first place.

Hero doesn’t consider her baking to be anything exceptional. Since her divorce, it’s been something of a solace. In the year that has passed since the signing of those papers, the two since the wedding itself, and now, though -

Well. If you ask Beatrice, Hero’s already the best baker in all of Britain; the mess that is Hero's kitchen serves as her cousin's first and best evidence of that. Applying to the show is just a way for her to prove it.

In truth, Hero doesn’t want to prove anything. The opportunity, though, when it comes knocking on her door, is all but impossible to ignore.

So she goes.

The Friday night before their first taping, she boards the Baker Bus out of Bristol and rides with the rest of the bakers to Welford Park. The mood is jovial but nervous, like orientation for a group of freshers. Hero, once so brilliant and bright, hangs back from the conversations for the first thirty minutes of the trip. It isn’t until one of the older women reaches out and touches her on the hand that she starts back into the moment.

The older woman introduces herself as Ursula – and suddenly, Hero finds herself smiling.

“That was the name of my childhood friend,” she says, her voice quiet.

The woman’s smile grows. “It’s a rare name, especially in your younger crowd,” she says, her Scouse accent almost a comfort.

“Not so odd,” Hero admits, before sharing her own name. Ursula shakes her head and gives her hand a squeeze – and with that, Hero is roped into her conversation.

The bus arrives at Welford Park as the sun sets down on the horizon. Nerves still linger in the air, but Hero steps off of the bus behind Ursula and feels a little less afraid than she did before.

Dinner is a hectic affair, with the lot of the contestants bustled off into rooms to deposit their things. Hero rejoins hands with Ursula to walk into their appointed hall – and there they are. No cameras, no directors, no nothing – just the judges and hosts that have made the past two years of her life a little more bearable.

Hero’s smile stays with her all night, through several courses of dinner and the bubbling chatter. When she parts ways with the rest of the bakers in the evening, she presses her back against her bed and holds a pillow to her chest.

(It is not the first night she goes to sleep without checking the lock on her door or for messages on her phone, but it is one of the few that she’s managed since the divorce. Come the next morning, she’ll leave her phone behind in her room, off and tucked into one of the end table’s drawers.)

*

Walking into the tent is –

An experience.

The gardens of Welford Park are welcoming, if manicured within an inch of their lives to reflect both the homely nature of the Great British Baking Show and the land’s own extensive history. The twelve bakers take the steps down into the tent two at a time, following the flow of the land until the thick fabric folds back, and -

Crew.

And it’s not as though Hero didn’t know that the show was going to be filmed – the presence of an extensive staff was one of the things the preliminary judges spoke to her about as she made her way through the application process. But the sheer number of people in the tent, compared to the lone camera operator outside is overwhelming enough that even a few of the other participants ahead of her stumble.

Ursula, bless her, places a reassuring hand against Hero’s back, and the two of them carry forward. They part only when they’re forced to, Ursula moving to the back of the tent while Hero stands somewhere in the middle. She smiles at each camera operator who flits in her direction, trying to hide the way that her hands tighten on the edge of her bench.

(She tries not to think about the show’s international appeal – about how her family in Sicily is watching, about how _he_ may be watching.)

And it’s this distraction that saves her. She doesn’t recognize the camera operator who turns, a handheld Sony F800 in his hand. She smiles at him anyway, though, and just barely registers the shock on his face before he turns away again.

Hero – blinks. Opens her mouth, goes to say something –

But then Sue, Mel, Mary, and Paul make their way into the tent, and the show begins.

***

Don John does not understand this country’s fascination with baking.

It is early summer. Six in the morning. He woke two hours ago, showered, dressed, and ate with the rest of the film crew. Now, desperately craving an espresso, he balances a hand-held camera between dry hands, carefully maneuvering both to keep other operators out of his shot and to stay out of shots, in turn.

If the crew was briefed about the identities of the bakers, he does not – did not – remember hearing any names he recognized. He was hundreds of miles from home, as it stood, with a crew that knew nothing of him, his half-brother, or his past.

And yet.

He turns in the midst of the tent’s controlled chaos, slipping into the rhythm of a day’s work. The day is set to be a long one – the first of the Great British Baking Show’s new season, with twelve bakers and their bakes to highlight. Mid-step, he looks up, sets up a shot against the morning light -

And there is Hero.

And she smiles at him.

He doesn’t know how he avoids dropping his camera onto the floor of the tent (though, if asked, it’s probably the thought of the replacement’s cost that saves him). Instead, he catches the distant look in her eye and turns on a dime, losing his shot but moving away before she has a second to realize who he is.

One of the crew, Conrade, gives him an odd look as he shifts towards Margaret, mother of two and hopeful from Liverpool. Don John takes the moment, though, to focus on the tools in his hand and breathe.

(There’s no ring on her finger. It’s a baking show, of course, so it may be in her pocket, her room, anywhere – and he’d heard nothing of a divorce. Even so – Don John glances back over his shoulder as Mary, Paul, Mel, and Sue waltz into the tent. Hero’s eyes are fixed on them, her fragile smile barely distracting him from her white knuckles.

But there is no ring there. And he has to wonder what that means,)

***

_It’s Cake Week, and our daring dozen are buckling down to get their hands dirty._

_***_

For that first day, she does everything in her power to ignore him.

It’s a strenuous day, as it is. Her morning signature goes over well enough with the judges, though they’re quick to point out that her Swiss roll, for its tight curl, lacks the flavor she needs to stand out from the crowd. Her technical cherry cake is passable, landing her eighth out of twelve in the pack. Ursula makes waves before they all make their way back to their bunks, with her work in the technical challenge landing her the much-lauded first place.

And yet.

For all of the distractions – the jokes from Mel and Sue, the warm looks from Ursula, and even the frantic exchanges she has with the bakers at the benches closest to her, Antonio and Enwezor – she can’t help but look at _him_.

He looks – healthy, if nothing else. The British weather has cost him some of his Sicilian tan, but he stands out in the crowd, as dark-haired and dark-eyed as ever. He doesn’t come near her bench, which she thanks her lucky stars for, but he moves close to Ursula on more than one occasion. More often than not, he’s ducking out of the main tent and into the talkback studio or out into the lawn for one-on-one interviews.

It is impossible not to remember their time together – Messina’s hot sun bearing down on her back, a full two and a half years ago. She remembers the lone kiss he pressed to the back of her hand, an archaic gesture that left her cousin smirking and her to-be husband grinding his teeth. She remembers him standing aside while some stranger, Baracchio, handed off doctored pictures of her to her fiancé.

(She remembers far more clearly Claudio’s fury and the bruises that appeared around her wrist when he gripped her at the altar, smiling with only teeth before he flung her to the side.)

There was no adequate way to punish him for his involvement in that summer’s affairs. His half-brother, though, had stepped up where both her father and her then-husband had failed. The pictures were wiped from existence, and Don John was sent from Messina and threatened with severe – if unofficial – punishments if he were to return.

And while Hero married Claudio in the wake of his departing steps, she divorced him not long after and made an exile of herself in the same fashion.

Someone catches her by the elbow. Hero winces immediately, then turns to see not Ursula but Mel looking at her with a bright but concerned smile.

“Time to move on, love; no reason to linger.”

Hero lets the host move her from the tent. A twinge of guilt stings her as she leaves her dishes behind – but then she sees Don John’s dark form moving out of the talkback room, and she scurries out to find her new friends.

***

She does...well, from what he sees. Tastes. Whatever.

Don John brushes the sweat from his brow and moves with the rest of the crew, divvying up the desserts that the bakers have left behind. There’s enough cherry cake for everyone, though some are admittedly better than others. Only a few of the bravest are willing to go after Dogberry’s half-raw disaster, and even then, only with the aid of lots of bottles of water.

Don John sweeps past Hero’s bench before Iva Vcelak beats him to it, snapping up a paper plate and heading out into the cool evening.

Welford Park hums with wildlife, with cicadas in the brush and a family of skunks waddling about not far away. The crew gives both them and him a wide berth as they flit in and out of the tent, relieved to have finished their first day on the job.

Don John cuts into Hero’s cake and has a bite for himself. It’s a fine cake – likely not as good as the woman who won first place’s, but it’s satisfying enough.

He’s only halfway through it when he sees a familiar shape moving in the dark.

Hero flits past him, one hand pressed to her chest, her face the picture of an apology. “I’m so sorry,” she calls into the tent. “I left my coat behind. I’ll just be going.”

If for the shadows or her own volition, she does not see him as she makes her way in and out again. Don John watches her slip back into the darkness and up towards the house, where the contestants are having dinner.

He does not regret what he did, two years ago. In the end, he escaped his half-brother and saw the man suffer, if only for a day.

He remembers Hero, though, on her to-be wedding day. He remembers the ringing of mourning bells on the evening of his escape.

He doesn’t think he could forget them if he tried.

And that – well. That more than anything else is what drives him away from her. He will not apologize for the steps he took to secure his own freedom, but he will, at least, not inflict himself on the young woman he transformed into his cage’s unwilling key.

(He finishes off his slice of cake and deposits the plate in the trash. He doesn’t know it, but a touch of cherry syrup lingers on his bottom lip.)

_***_

_Two bakers down, ten remaining. Will Bread Week shake things up in the tent?_

***

She can’t say that things become easier in the tent, but they do...relax, some.

Dogberry goes in the first week, followed by Diana. By the time bread week comes around, her nerves are still dancing, but something deep in her gut has settled.

(He hasn’t approached her. She doesn’t know if it’s of his own volition, of his supervisor’s, or if he recognizes her at all. Their paths have yet to cross, though, and she does not know whether or not she’s grateful for the reprieve.)

She and the other contestants received their briefs for both the signature and the showstopper long before the actual filming of the show began. As such, she’s able to walk into the tent, hand in hand with Ursula, and offer the camera operator nearest to her a genuine smile.

“Have you been well?” she asks.

The young woman – Hana – cocks her head but smiles back. “Well enough,” she admits.

Hero inclines her head, her smile leaving small creases in her cheeks. Hana looks pleased at their shared presence – a good sign, Hero assumes. Don John hasn’t gone and spread the word about her – whatever that word might be – through the staff, then.

She catches a glimpse of him as he ducks in and out of the tent. He’s swapped cameras with the woman who does their landscaping work – it seems, then, that he’ll be catching the wildlife shots instead of taking in the bakers.

Something tense untangles in her gut. Hero watches him go, then focuses on the edge of her bench again.

At her side, before she turns away, Hana clears her throat. When Hero looks up at her, the other woman has a small smile on her face.

“He’ll be back,” she says, as though reassuring the girl at the bench. “He’s better than most at finding the small creatures on the lawn, but I’ve no doubt that the DOP’ll have him back in here by the Technical.”

Hero feels her brow start to crinkle in confusion. “I...don’t understand?”

Hana winks. “You stare more than you think you do,” she says. Before Hero can ask her to elaborate, she wheels away, moving over to gather a walking shot of Iain and Medea.

Hero gapes after the other woman, her heart suddenly racing in her chest. She gets a sympathetic glance from Kate at the bench ahead of her and can only summon a look of confusion in response.

(As Mary, Paul, Mel, and Sue make their way into the tent, she can only hope that the nine camera operators in the tent managed to miss getting that expression on film.)

*

The technical challenge is almost a comfort when she hears it. Hero’s face splits into a grin as Mel and Sue announce that the judges demand ciabattas for their afternoon tea. She feels more than sees a few different cameras swing to her, knowing that her Sicilian heritage will make her expression all the more meaningful to her watching audience.

Her relief is so immediate, in light of the challenging technicals she’s faced so far, that she almost misses the way Don John starts to inch towards her bench.

The recipe, as ever is pared down. She loses herself in the smells of salt and flour, humming a familiar tune under her breath as she starts to build up the gluten network.

It’s only when she feels a presence at her side that she looks up.

Her eyes go wide.

Don John is not looking at her, but his camera is. He keeps his gaze focused on his lens, or on the edge of her bench; Hero is too distracted to make much of his sight line.

For a long moment, the two of them hover in one another’s vicinity. It’s several seconds of footage, Hero knows, that the editors will not be able to use – and it’s that thought that snaps her back into the present. She rearranges her features and looks back down at her bread – not quite managing a smile, but pulling together something like composure.

(She’d learned to do this in her year and a half of marriage, but separate now as she is from that threat, she finds her muscles lacking.)

Barely audible in the noise of the tent, Don John clears his throat. He doesn’t manage to say anything, but with a flick of his head, Hero understands what he’s asking.

“I don’t want to say I’m feeling confident,” she says, hyper-aware of the way her voice shakes, “but – well. I have a feeling that if I don’t get these right, I won’t be welcomed back home again.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Hero sees Don John wince behind the camera as though she’s struck him. Her grip on her dough nearly slips as she straightens, pity streaking across her face before she can stop it.

Almost, it seems, despite himself, Don John meets her eye.

(His eyes, she remembers, were always dark like ink, like burning coals staring at her out of that disdainful face. He is no different now; cultivated disinterest hiding away those thoughts that, now more than ever, she wants to unravel.)

He opens his mouth –

And in sweeps Sue with a comment made to match Hero’s own about her heritage. Hero feels her gaze linger on Don John before she turns away, even as Sue cracks a joke. By the time she manages to smile, Don John’s gaze is fixed back on his camera, as though he’s forgotten her completely.

***

If it were up to him, he’d transfer to the landscaping unit full-time. On a good weekend, the tent is crammed full with upwards of thirty people, with the bakers vastly outnumbered by the crew circling them like vultures.

However, as the bakers’ numbers dwindle, so does the staff’s. Don John hasn’t so much as endeared himself to the DOP as he has made himself useful on previous jobs. As such, he remains a part of the crew, with a few allowances provided when he asks to be let out into the yard.

It is a bit, he finds, like being his half-brother’s dog again, though the leash is lengthier.

He swaps out his wide-angle lens for a tighter angle as morning tips over into afternoon. From a distance, he watches the bakers retreat to their lodging, while the crew once again sweeps away any leftovers they won’t be making use of.

When he steps inside, there’s little to nothing left. Ciabatta of all shapes and sizes are spread out across the gingham altar at the front of the tent. While most have been greedily taken up by the crew, Hana, the DOP’s immediate assistant, is in the middle of checking her phone while hovering over a plate with just one ciabatta remaining.

For a long moment, Don John considers letting it go. Guilt flares alongside hunger in his stomach, though, as Hana looks up and catches his eye. She pointedly holds his gaze, then glances down at the plate.

Like a dog, indeed. Don John walks forward, leveling her with his most effective glare.

Hana’s expression twists into something knowing and – not sympathetic, but its distant cousin. She doesn’t pat him on the shoulder as she pushes off of the bench, but that look lingers, mixing uncomfortably with the guilt in his stomach.

Don John looks down at the ciabatta and – after a moment’s hesitation – picks it up. He does not look at the picture of Hero, sun-soaked and smiling, in front of it.

He bites down.

(And it’s Messina; grapes under his fingers, lamb on his tongue, and the salt in his hair.)

(But it is also an apology – and not one he thinks he deserves.)

***

_Six bakers remain in our happy little tent, but are they prepared to step up to this week’s international demands? That’s right – it’s European Cakes week._

***

Somewhere in the midst of the chaos and the eliminations and one truly off-putting experience with an ice cream cake, the crew picks up on the tension between Don John and Hero.

Hana, of all of them, lingers closest to Hero, prodding her when the cameras aren’t running to reveal her secrets. Hero, long used to Beatrice’s silver tongue, learns to dance around her questions, often with help from Ursula and even Kate, still hanging on to the competition.

In the interim, though, she finds herself – letting the crew lean into their beliefs.

They are, in truth, completely misguided. Most of the camera operators and even a few of a gaffers are under the impression that one or the other of them have a crush. Hero rubs the skin at the base of her bare ring finger whenever a wry smile comes her way and lets them make their television.

(It is not, after all, the first time she’s been in a situation like this. It’s nice, at least, to know that this game will come to an end more pleasantly than the game in Messina did.)

Don John, for his part, seems to shrug off his uncharacteristic avoidance as the rumors start to circulate. Whenever Hero sees Hana move to pester him, the bastard throws back his shoulders and glares at her until the assistant DOP is all but in giggles. He sneers down his nose at the bulk of the crew, arms folded across his chest whenever his hands aren’t wrapped around a camera.

Though, Hero notes, he does linger closer to her bench than he did in the earliest weeks of filming. In turn, she finds herself leaving at least one of her bakes apart from the rest, hoping in the quietest part of her mind that he’ll have time to grab it before the rest of the crew descends.

In those rare moments the two manage to make eye contact over the bulk of the camera, she finds herself responding to un-asked questions – elaborating on her bakes, offering quiet comments on the day itself or on the week she’s just had.

She’s more careful with her words, now.

(Don John still never replies.)

European Cakes week is, in this way, almost no different than the rest. The morning call for the signature has the crew and bakers up just as the sun rises over the horizon. Hero bites back a yawn and kisses Ursula on the cheek before the older woman deposits her at her bench. Already, her eyes have found Don John’s dark hair as it catches fire in the beams of sunlight that streak into the tent.

He turns -

And something stutters in Hero’s chest.

His eyes are still soft around the edges, and it looks as though he’s forgotten to shave. The blunt stubble on his cheeks does not age him, though. Instead, with the top of his shirt unbuttoned and an unguarded expression on his face, he looks for all the world like any other young man she may have stumbled across in her father’s fields.

He doesn’t catch her looking, and thus, the expression remains, even as he turns back to his equipment. Hero stands, stunned, until she hears a soft guffaw from behind her. Abruptly, she whirls – and there’s Richard, last week’s star baker. He winks at her as he stretches, his joints cracking as he goes.

Hero feels her cheeks flush a terrible deep red. She musters up her bravest glare, but it just gets her another chuckle for her efforts. With a huff, she turns her back on the older man, her nerves tying her stomach in knots as she tries her best to make herself small at the front of the tent.

The morning does not go well for her. The yeast-leavened cake that the judges demand of her remains unpleasantly damp in the middle, overdone with almond liqueur in her attempts to woo Mary Berry. She leaves the tent for cleaning with her head held high but a vice wrapped around her throat.

(It is the first morning in the crew’s memory that she’s not made eye contact with Don John – and even the man himself seems to notice. He watches her go in the reflection of his camera lens and frowns, both at the cake on her bench and at the thump-thump-thumping of something tight in his chest).

*

“Come now,” Ursula tells her, wrapping her arms around Hero’s middle as the bakers sit outside at their benches. “We’ve all had bad mornings. You’ve got two more challenges to go, love; you can pull it back.”

Hero rests her head in the crook of Ursula’s shoulder, flushing lightly under the compliments of her other bakers. Even Richard reaches out and gives her hand a squeeze as they sip cool tea in the heat of the morning.

(He reminds her of Benedick in many ways. Hero finds herself offering him a damp smile, forgiveness written into the lines of her face as he shrugs his shoulders, momentarily care-free.)

In the midst of their silent exchange, Ursula digs a gentle finger into Hero’s side. Tickled, Hero jumps, but Ursula’s hands catch her before she can fly too far away. A nod of the older woman’s head directs Hero’s attention away from the laughter bubbling in her chest and back towards the tent, where a familiar, dark head ducks out from beneath the thick fabric.

Hero glances at Ursula with a raised eyebrow, but the older woman only smiles. It’s not until Hero squints for a closer look that she realizes Don John has a slice of her cake cradled on the plate in his hands.

***

(Night falls. Welford Park dances in the night, gold on blue. Don John sits at the makeshift bar, nursing a glass full of more ice than whiskey. Throughout the room, crew, bakers, and judges alike mix, filling the room to the brim with noise and laughter.

Someone clears her throat at his side. Don John glances over – then looks back again.

Hero has two drinks in her hands. One is tall and bubbling; the other is dark and foamy.

When she follows his silent gaze, she offers him a tentative smile. “It’ll taste better that the almond cake,” she promises, her voice almost too soft to hear in the jovial hall. “May I sit?”

Don John has never struggled to find his voice, never let societal convention keep him from speaking. Faced with Hero, now, and the soft taste of almond in the back of his throat, he finds that all he can do is nod.

Hero beams and passes him the darker of the two drinks.)

*

(Across the room, Hana, Ursula, Kate, and Richard watch with bated breath as the two strangers fall into stilted conversation.)

***

_We’ve made it to the quarter-final, though not without some ups and downs. After a tray bake you could see from space and an ice cream disaster, how will our bakers handle the pressure of patisserie?_

***

How she stays in through European Cake week, Hero will never know. Between one blink and the next, though, she’s back at her bench and in the midst of the semi-final, a showstopper bearing down on her.

Don John meets her eye readily now when she makes her way into the tent. She smiles brightly at him. Their conversation at the bar top was quiet, even short. The tension on set, though, has eased to the point where the rest of the crew is almost disappointed.

(That same night, Richard has almost demanded his share of the bet money back, but Ursula had declined. “See them through to the end,” she’d said, the ghost of a smile on her face.)

Now, it’s Hero, Ursula, Richard, and Luis still in the tent. Hero bites her lip as Sue and Mel count them down, her fingers trembling beneath the counter of her bench.

***

He...doesn’t understand her. Not perfectly.

And it shouldn’t be important that he doesn’t. Don John fiddles with the focus on his camera, his sure feet moving him up from an empty bench and onto Richard’s. His back’s to her, and yet, he swears he can feel her gaze drifting away from her entremets and onto his neck.

(Their conversation from those weeks before had concluded before he’d been satisfied, not that he knows what to make of the feeling. She’d reached out to him, though, drink in hand, and asked him all of the questions that had plagued her in the years since he’d disappeared across the English Channel.

He’d done her the courtesy of answering her – a gift for the key. When silence grew between them, he’d motioned towards her ringless finger and asked the question dancing in the back of his mind.

“Divorced,” she’d told him, her left hand curling in on itself. Don John had frowned, studying her features for as long as the moment’s politeness would let him. He doesn’t have to imagine much to see her back against the wall, though; can remember Claudio’s hands moving for her neck at the bidding of his words.

He doesn’t apologize. He does, however, order her another drink, and does not chase her when she retreats, a shy smile replacing that distant expression on her face.)

(“You did not light that violence in him,” Hero had told him. “If anything, you revealed it to me before he could truly hurt me. It was my decision to ignore it.”)

Richard chats with him despite his vacant expression, relaying the details of his hazelnut mocha entremets. Don John offers him a nod before panning away, letting the camera glance over Ursula and on her tight expression for a long moment.

Hana clears her throat behind him. A tap on the outside of his foot, and the two of them change positions. The tent may be less crowded now, what with the vast majority of the contestants out of the game, but that does not mean that the camera operators are still not dancing to stay out of one another’s shots.

Don John moves as he is bid – and there’s Hero.

He does his best to line up his shot as she focuses in on her baking. Even so, when she glances up, she gifts him with the same small smile from the week before.

Don John does not mean to smile back, but the right corner of his mouth ticks upward without his consent.

If possible, Hero glows even more brightly. The moment crystallizes in his head, slowing time so he can count his breaths looking between her in person and her on his screen.

“What are you making?” His voice doesn’t crack, but it feels like it should.

Hero turns her attention back to her hands, knuckle-deep in her mixture. “I hadn’t made these before I got into the competition,” she admits, voice soft with respect and laughter. “But I wanted them to balance one another – a bit of bitter and a bit of sweet.”

Chocolate mousse and raspberry entremets pairs with pomegranate, fig, and honey. Don John lets his camera linger on her hands as she cracks her pomegranate open, too focused to notice the way his breathing speeds up as her fingers dip inside to fish out the seeds.

*

(They’re delicious, of course, why wouldn’t they be? He swipes one of each before his fellow camera operators can make it to the goods and smirks at Hana, not two steps behind him. He may not cheer with the rest of the crew when the judges announce their picks for the final, but when Hero looks out to meet his eye, her own filled with tears, he gentles, just for her.)

***

_As we set up our village fete, our three remaining bakers take to the tent for the last time._

***

Hero goes into her last day of the competition expecting to lose.

Her signature Viennoiseri gets her a handshake, but she comes last in the technical. When she enters the tent for the showstopper, she is almost relieved that the battle for the title has left her far behind. Ursula pulled ahead of her weeks ago, and now the only thing standing between her and the title is Richard, with his steady hands and his reassuring smile.

So she spends her final bake – a Piece Montee, Messina done up in chocolate – having fun.

The standing structure comes together under her steady hands, and for the first time, she thanks Great Britain for its cool summers. She spends what little time she can saying her thank yous to the crew that passes her by and ignoring the increasingly dull roar coming from the village fete outdoors.

(Beatrice had called her that morning – the plane she and Benedick had meant to take out of Italy had been delayed once, and then again. There would be no one waiting for her in the crowd save for the bakers who’d all come before her.)

The tent, in its own way, is far emptier than it ever has been before. She can hear the echoing of her fellow bakers’ footsteps and can distinguish them from the crew – to the point where she is not surprised when she looks up and finds Don John and his camera standing across from her station.

He leans against an empty bench, but his gaze is not on his machinery. Instead, he looks at her, a steadying force.

“I haven’t seen any familiar faces,” he says in a voice meant just for her.

Hero looks to her stand mixer for a moment, then smiles sadly. “My cousin’s plane’s been delayed,” she says. “But that’s alright.”

She can count on Don John, at least, never to pity her. The man merely nods, then looks down at the dish in her hands.

Something dull shines in his eyes, and he looks, for a moment, almost nostalgic.

Before she can stop herself, Hero motions him forward.

“I used to make a mess of the vineyards when I was younger,” she says, drawing a line across her presentation board, marked as it is with fine lines. “It was far enough away from the house that I could play adventurer. Beatrice would chase after me, and we’d come home for supper a fine mess.”

Don John hums. He glances around the tent, then lets his own hand drift up towards her array.

“You have a foundation here,” he says, motioning towards a spot near the edge of the property. “I spent more than my fair share of hours then, when we...visited.”

Hero follows his fingers, then nods. “I spent some time there, myself,” she admits. “It seems strange that we did not run into one another.”

(Neither of them see the flash of a camera as Hana turns their way, nor the smile that Ursula and Richard exchange across the tent.)

Don John’s smile is sad and small. “Call it design, not fate,” he admits, pulling his hand away. Hero reaches after him, and their fingers brush before he can right his camera.

He looks down at her fingers, covered as they are in chocolate and flour, and quietly clears his throat. Hero does not rush to pull her hand away, but she does jolt as her mixer shudders on its stand.

By the time she looks up, he is gone again, back behind his camera and turning towards Sue and Mel, the two of them making a drum set of the dishes at the back of the tent.

Something twinges in her chest – sad, but good – as she buckles down and gets back to work.

*

In the end, it’s her fellow bakers who devour her “Messina in Chocolate” in the mess of the village fete. Kate swings her into a hug as soon as the bake is on a table, leaving Diana to press a kiss to her cheek. Ursula, bright-eyed and red-cheeked, drags Hero over to her own family and spends a good ten minutes introducing Hero to her grandchildren.

No one asks where Hero’s family is – word gets around quickly enough. Instead, there’s Richard taking her hand and Dogberry all but yelling in her ear, and Hero is happy, happier than she was on her wedding day and in all the days that followed.

There is nothing left of her bake to share when she feels fingers brush against the back of her hand. Hero looks up, expecting Ursula or another baker -

And there is Don John.

He bears no camera with him, nor any of the equipment she’s gotten so used to him wearing. Instead, it’s just him – a shirt half-open, even in the summer chill, and a leather jacket draped over one arm.

He looks – awkward, for lack of a better term, but Hero’s never felt her heart beat so hard.

They stand in silence for a moment. Then, another. Don John seems to realize that his hand is still pressed against hers, and he pulls back, but he does not pull away. Instead, he clears his throat and meets her gaze with determination.

“I’ll keep you company, if you like.”

(What he does not say: he went up to Hana after Hero’d left the tent and had a brief exchange of words. The DOP’s assistant had slapped him on the back and let out a crow that’d almost had him picking up his camera again, but the moment was lost. She sent him into the talkback studio, confiscated his badge, and all but pushed him out towards the crowded fete.)

Hero smiles with her whole body, though she does not know it. “There’s nothing left,” she admits, turning so he can see her plate, “but I can find something else for you, if you’d like. If you have the time.”

She holds out a hand and waits for him, her fingertips almost electric with energy.

Don John hesitates – then takes it in his own.

(Some fifteen metres away, Ursula holds out her hand. Richard, beleaguered, presses twenty pounds into it, while Kate starts to dig into her purse.)

*

At the end of the day, Hero does not win the competition – Ursula does, and much to the delight of her family. As she cradles her bouquet of flowers in her arms, though, she looks back at the crowd.

Don John stands apart from all of the rest – and by God, he smiles at her.

(So maybe she wins something, after all.)


End file.
